Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ birds — with size, habitat, diet, voice, behavior, and the field marks that tell them apart.
Bay-headed Tanager
A vividly colored tanager with a rich chestnut head and glowing turquoise-green body, common in forest canopy from Central to South America.
songbird
Screech Owl
A small, well-camouflaged, tufted owl of the Americas known for its distinctive quavering trills rather than an actual screech.
owl
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
One of the most common hummingbirds of Central America, with iridescent green upperparts, a rufous tail, and a reddish bill tipped in black.
hummingbird
Blackpoll Warbler
A boreal-breeding warbler famous for its extraordinary nonstop transoceanic migration flight from the northeastern U.S. to South America.
songbird
Crimson-backed Tanager
A striking black tanager with a fiery crimson back and lower underparts, common in gardens and edge habitats of northern South America.
songbird
Neotropic Cormorant
The smallest and most widespread cormorant in the Americas outside North America's temperate zone, slender and long-tailed with a thin white border at the base of the bill in breeding plumage.
seabird
Painted Bunting
Often called the most colorful bird in North America, the male Painted Bunting displays an almost impossibly vivid patchwork of blue, green, and red.
songbird
Black-headed Gull
An abundant Eurasian gull, despite its name actually sporting a chocolate-brown (not black) hood, and a rare but regular visitor to eastern North America.
seabird
Baltimore Oriole
A brilliant flame-orange and black songbird of eastern North America, named for the heraldic colors of Lord Baltimore, known for its hanging pouch nest.
songbird
Rusty Blackbird
A boreal-breeding blackbird that turns rusty-edged in fall plumage, now one of the most steeply declining songbirds in North America.
songbird
Great-tailed Grackle
A large, glossy, long-tailed blackbird with a loud, varied voice that has rapidly expanded across urban and agricultural North America.
songbird
Chuck-will's-widow
The largest nightjar in North America, best known for its far-carrying, repetitive nighttime call that gives the bird its name.
other
Common Grackle
A large, iridescent blackbird with a long keel-shaped tail and pale yellow eyes, common across eastern and central North America.
songbird
Summer Tanager
The only entirely red bird in North America, the Summer Tanager male is a rosy-red songbird known for specializing in catching and de-stinging bees and wasps.
songbird
Saltmarsh Sparrow
A tidal marsh specialist with a bright orange face and crisp streaked breast, among the most threatened songbirds in North America due to sea level rise.
songbird
Pionus Parrot
A stocky, short-tailed parrot genus from Central and South America, typified by the Blue-headed Parrot's cobalt-blue head and red undertail coverts.
parrot
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
The only hummingbird that regularly breeds in eastern North America, with males showing a brilliant iridescent ruby-red throat that can flash black in poor light.
hummingbird
Eurasian Collared-Dove
A pale, sandy-gray dove with a distinctive black half-collar on the nape, rapidly expanding across North America since escaping captivity in Florida in the 1980s.
other
Savannah Sparrow
A streaky, ground-dwelling sparrow with a yellow eyebrow patch and short notched tail, widespread across open grassy habitats in North America.
songbird
Lesser Black-backed Gull
A medium-large European gull with a dark slate mantle and yellow legs, increasingly common as a wintering visitor to North America in recent decades.
seabird
Western Gull
A large, dark-backed gull restricted almost entirely to the Pacific coast of North America, a common sight on rocky shorelines and piers from Washington to Baja California.
seabird
Forster's Tern
A medium-sized tern that breeds almost entirely within North America, distinguished from the similar Common Tern by its pale, silvery wingtips and orange legs.
seabird
Common Tern
A widespread, medium-sized tern found across North America, Europe, and Asia, with a black cap, red-orange bill, and deeply forked tail typical of the group.
seabird
Swainson's Thrush
A buffy-faced forest thrush known for its upward-spiraling flute-like song and heavy nocturnal migration through much of North America.
songbird